GROUND ZERO: A MEMORIAL

GROUND ZERO: A MEMORIAL; Firefighters Block a Plan for Statue in Brooklyn

By KEVIN FLYNN

Published: January 18, 2002

Plans to honor firefighters with a bronze statue depicting a black, a white and a Hispanic firefighter raising an American flag at ground zero were abandoned yesterday in response to complaints by firefighters.

The statue was to have been placed outside Fire Department Headquarters in Brooklyn and was based on a newspaper photograph that showed three white firefighters raising the flag in the World Trade Center debris.

But the design chosen by fire officials and the developer who manages their headquarters drew criticism because it depicted the group as racially and ethnically diverse. The complaints led to a meeting yesterday at which Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and the developer, Bruce Ratner, agreed to scuttle plans for the statue and re-evaluate what kind of a memorial should be placed at the site to recognize the heroism of firefighters, officials said.

''This was to honor firefighters,'' said Francis X. Gribbon, a department spokesman, ''and now firefighters have expressed unhappiness and that is not what this was all about.''

Opponents of the statue had collected the signatures of more than 1,000 firefighters who objected to the design, saying it had sacrificed historical verisimilitude for political correctness.

Debra Schwartz, the director of projects for Studio EIS, which helped design and sculpture the statue, said her company never intended it as a historical record but a symbolic representation. Michele de Milly, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ratner, said officials had decided to ''take a fresh look at the whole thing.'' Officials had estimated the cost of the life-size statue, at an upstate foundry waiting to be cast, at $180,000.

Lt. Paul Washington, president of the Vulcan Society, which represents black firefighters, said his organization was not upset by the decision. But he said whatever monument or monuments are now planned should recognize that 12 black firefighters were among the 343 killed on Sept. 11.

Fire officials said one possible approach was to go forward with a statue depicting the flag raising historically and then put up a second one recognizing the breadth of race and ethnicity involved in the emergency response that day.